Something thunked my thick skull today. It’s one of Calvin’s blog entry on men’s behaviour and attitude that gets worst after some time being married. While it was meant to be a joke, I find it quite true in some ways. Click the link if you would like to amuse yourself today.

While Calvin talked about men’s behaviour towards marriage as a joke, I seriously don’t think that such behaviour can be taken as a joke in long term run as sometimes, such attitude would bring a lot of disaster in one’s marriage. It does not only affect the women but the men as well. Neglecting your spouse and taking things that your spouse did for you for granted is really not a joke. Lack of appreciation or lack of effort made to improve or maintain the relationship will very well bring resentment to the individuals involved.

R.E.S.E.N.T.M.E.N.T, yes, people, resentment, one word that was never in my vocabulary and I never knew the real meaning of it until I am committed to a relationship. Resentment, ladies and gentlemen is a negative emotion that manifest as a result of recurring disappointment after putting so much faith and hope on certain matters.

I absolutely would not, and without a doubt refused to pretend that I do not have any resentment in my relationship. Maybe I could lie to the whole damn world in the face and convinced them that I’m speaking nothing but truth when I say that my marriage is perfect and flawless, but I could not lie to myself about it. There are unresolve resentment in my relationship that I dare not speak of for fear that it will destroy the relationship. But, let’s leave the scribing of my own resentment in my diary, as there are nothing that people who are outside of the relationship could do about it. Let’s talk about it in general context.

I believe, whether a husband or wife acknowledge their dissatisfaction about the things that’s going on in their relationship or not, there is something that’s sometimes bottled up inside and slowly, it turned into resentment.One may sometimes realized it, sometimes not and it’s left buried deep inside eating up the individual who felt it, resorting the particular individual to be bitter and most of the times, view things negatively with absolute contempt and loathe. People who felt resentment sometimes gives up hoping and putting faith in the things or people that they believe in. In the case of resentment felt towards one’s marriage, is giving up hoping on one another. In other words, you get very pissed off and fed up with certain things to even bother about it anymore.

Resentment, a silent poison, an effective weapon to destroy love and passion. Even the strongest relationship of all is not spared from resentment. A lot of marriage councilors admit that resentment and contempt is one of the biggest factor that caused divorce, apart from infidelity. People who are in a committed in a relationship would want the best for both parties, but some certain things in relationship takes two to work, as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango. Some certain things simply couldn’t work if only one party made an effort for it.

Let’s take this for an example, a wife may hope for something from her husband, and she puts on so much faith on him, hoping that one day, the things that she asked for would be realized. The things that I meant does not necessarily mean material possession, but emotional matters. The wife would wait and wait for years and years for it to happen just because she sincerely love and have faith in her other half.

But one’s patience could run out, and one day, the wife decided to give up hoping and maybe when the things that she’s hoping for is finally realized, she may already stop hoping for the things that she wanted so much and refuse to accept what’s offered to her, and by that time, it would be far to late to mend the broken heart, or worst, a broken relationship isn’t it? And men wonder why their wife are bitter and easily irritated. Don’t they know that such things as resentment exist? But of course, such things could go the other way around too, not just the wife. The husband may feel that way too about his wife about certain things and resentment is bottled up deep inside of him.

Behind closed doors issues like sex may also bring resentment. A husband may be in the mood for sex in an ungodly hour, and the wife simply in the mood for sleep more than making love. She either tells her husband off or just lay back and let her husband do whatever he wants to her. The result: both party are not satisfied with the lack of involvement in the making love session. Slowly, resentment will build up between the couple if they decided to keep quite about the whole fiasco repeatedly. The husband feel that he’s being neglected and decided to either put off sex and intimacy away from their marriage or worst, find someone else to shower his ‘love’ while the wife will feel that her husband lack understanding and compassion about the matter, but refuse to talk about it because she’s afraid that it would hurt her husband’s feelings.

The key to avoid serious case of resentment from being bottled up in both parties is actually very simple, which is an open discussion or a proper communication with one another. Discussing things openly with your spouse and without holding grudge towards towards each other after the discussion even if there’s no absolute result to solve the problem that was discussed when the discussion is done is crucial. The things with men sometimes is that it’s hard for them to listen to what women would like to spill out without offering her a way to solve it. Men, when a woman wants to talks, it does not always means that she wants you to solve her problems. Sometimes, she just wants you to listen. Take this as an example.

When a wife says this: “My boss is giving me hard time at work! I’m pissed off with him”

Instead of saying this” “Why don’t you just quit or get a new job?”

Try saying this: “Poor thing. Bosses are like that. They have certain expectation towards their employee”

So that you can avoid getting : “Why should I quit or get a new job? I like doing what I do!”

And get this instead: “Yeah, I guess so. Bosses are like that. IÂ would act like him if I’m in his shoes too. But I really need to get this out, I get so stress up with work sometimes,”

When you’re in a relationship, proper communication can avoid resentments and misunderstanding and unnecessary quarrels between couple. But one would have to remember to be accept things that will be said in a certain discussion with an open mind, or else,not only the discussion would not be fruitful, but will add more problems instead.

Cleffairy: I have so many beautiful things in my life that I can be proud of, and yet I’m denied the rights to boast or even talk about it to the world. Deep inside, I wonder why did I put up with it, though? What’s stopping me, actually? I must be the biggest coward of all.

19 comments

oh gosh. i hope that my post will not have you bashing your hubby 2nite. 😛

for me, it’s really simple. a majority of guys do not share the same view like me. maybe im different in some way. some even say that im gay. maybe its because im brought up in a family where a majority are women. i tend to have higher level of sensitivity. but whatever it is, this is my formula for a healthy relationship

RESPECT + TOLERANCE + UNENDING LOVE + GOD = RELATIONSHIP

there’s no easy way to go about it. and yes, men always joke about it when they go for drinking sessions at the bar or at the kopitiam. ive often overheard them saying….my wife like this, my wife like that, or mygf like this, my gf like that….in a negative way. if i were their spouses or gf, i would have had a divorce in an instant. respect them not only in your house, but also when you’re out. dont talk bad about your spouses with your friends…what will they think of you. if you want respect from your spouses, you’ve got to earn it. and it doesnt come cheap.

1) there are those who recognize this feeling of resentment before it’s too late and
2) there are those who never recognizes it even after it’s too late.

Resentment is an interesting topic to talk about because it’s a very complex feeling. Most of the times we don’t identify this unhappy, pent-up feeling inside of us as resentment. It’s as though the subconscious mind does not know the meaning of resentment.

When one is let down repeatedly, the disappointment and unhappy feeling is there. It accumulates. Even after we’ve accepted the apology, this feeling doesn’t go away. We think we’ve forgiven the other person, but the truth is, we just buried it in our subconscious. And we don’t even realize that we buried it in our subconscious mind.

The symptoms of resentment will show. And this too, we do not realize. We start getting upset at little things the other party has done. Things that usually won’t get on our nerves suddenly becomes bigger and bigger of an issue and you start to bring this issue up. Phone calls, sms, meeting, talking, etc turn sour. And sometimes we ask ourselves, why. Why is this happening? What is happening? And why are we behaving like this?

We often don’t get the answer to our own erratic behavior.

The resentment builds and builds and builds. At this point, anything that happens has the potential to burst the bubble. And when it bursts, we end the relationship/strike/ go on a cold war because we “cannot tahan already”.

Sometimes when we look back and think about what has happened, we will realise that the starting point of all the “bad feelings” will be the first time we swept things into our subconscious. We won’t even know that we are sweeping things into our subconscious.

The way I see to cure resentment is to first identify this “unhappy feeling”. And to do that, we must first acknowledge that we ARE unhappy. We then have to question ourselves about why we are unhappy. This questioning part is the most emotionally disturbing process. We need to question at least three layers to find out why we are REALLY unhappy. It’s usually not a simple answer. “Because he always come back late”, “Because she didn’t call me for a whole week”, or “Because he doesn’t want to have sex with me” IS NOT THE ANSWER you are looking for.

When you think you’ve found the reason to the unhappiness, ask yourself this question, “Is this why I’m really unhappy?” When you’ve finally found THE answer, you will feel a pang inside of you. This pang can feel good or bad depending on the answer that you’ve found. Sometimes, in the process of questioning ourselves, we deny the answers because of insecurities we’ve never acknowledge or they challenge what we thought was true and right all these while. Until we find the courage to confront these ghosts, we will never get our answer.

Getting the answer is one thing, solving the problem is another thing.

Calvin…paiseh, missed your comment. LOL. Neh I din bash up my hubby last night. He was so damn hot…LOL… oh heck la, I din mean in a dirty way, he got a high fever, so I guess, the bashing would have to wait. LOL. Kidding la. When I’m not syiok with small things, I’ll just sulk la. The bashing would have to wait until I found out that he’s keeping a mistress somewhere. 😛
Calvin, some guys really know how to love and respect their women while others… well, others are just typical guys who only treat women good during the courtship. Men, weird creature, I must say. When they are ‘soft’, they are hard, but when they are hard, they are ‘soft’. LMAO…weird, weird…okay, enough dirty joke. You’re definitely right, respect, tolerance , unconditional love and some faith is essential in marriage, or a relationship. There’s no easy way in maintaining and improving a relationship, both parties needs to work it out, I always believe it too. But Calvin, I also believe that to maintain a healthy marriage, fidelity and devotion is important too. Three in a marriage is always a crowd. Well, I am very aware that men talk cock in their yum cha session about their wives, let’s just say that I better not catch mine doing the same thing, or else, he will regret that he’s even born…I have some very nasty torture in my sleeves!

Kevin… aiya not cannot argue with women, you can argue…but NEVER argue with your mom, your grandma and your wife… and next time, your granddaughter. LOL.

Shawn…resentment, a word that I really wish never exist in my vocabulary or anyone’s vocabs. It’s not a good feeling, definitely a negative one. 🙁

U-jean, whoa, wud a lengthy comment…. I do recognize some of my feelings as resentment, however, merely recognizing it would be no use, because there’s simply no easy way to get out of it, and sometimes, even talking about it with my other half, I felt that there’s NO way out of it. In some cases, one are not given a choice to either get rid of the feelings through solving the problems that brings resentment in the first place because some certain things, it takes two to work it out. 🙁 Either put up with it and endure the feelings, or…just pack up the bags and leave! It’s all right, U-jean…. sometimes, we really need to get things out of our head, so I understand why your comment are so lengthy when it comes to a topic that you feel so strongly about. LOL.

Pete, sometimes, respect only not enough. LOL. Have to stay loyal, keep the outlaws at arm length, etc etc. Ahahahaha… very susah ooo!

Chrisau… lol….sorry ya, my articles are usually very long winded, I bla bla bla alot. LOL. I read Mars and Venus…however, though there are many and theories about why and hows in Mars and Venus, I found that sometimes, not everything can be applied to Asian couples, especially where Asian men are usually tend to stay in their cave more than do something about their shattering relationship. I guess, ego is one of the factor… and one more thing horr, some men simply prefers to go around yum cha and do their ‘manly things’ than read! Alamak, really caveman!

Chris… yeah, I guess most men do, but there are still cavemen. Ahahaha… it’s nice to hear that you spend quality time with your wife and kids, because some men do take things for granted. Keep it up, Chris, give all my love to your kids and wife for me. 😀

Eugene, let’s go celebrate the Americans being colour blind! When will Malaysia be colour blind… well, not likely when there’s ‘I’m more supreme than you’ nonsense going on everywhere in Malaysia.

Without intending to be derogatory, a friend of mine once said, all women are crazy. Its just the degree of how crazy they are. (and I mean this in the most lighthearted way *crosses heart*)

When you complain, men are genetically programmed to provide a solution to the problem. Logically if something is giving you a problem, you eliminate it from your life. Problem solved. But yes…I’m aware it doesn’t always work that way in the world we live in, and Occam’s razor is not a viable solution for every situation. But men think with the logical, rational side of the brain (at least I’ve been told they do – and from personal experience) and the logical solution is the best one.

Want your significant other to listen? Sure…just tell the dude “Darling, I’m stressed and I need to vent.” And I’m sure he will sit there and listen to you vent because he has to – i mean loves you.

The truth is, that sometimes women have undue expectation. You want us to just listen without offering advice? Sure…I can do that. I’m sure I can bobble my head in vapid submission because I still want sex, and I don’t want an argument. But would it be honest?

The point is, we men aren’t psychic. I’m quite sure you don’t want a partner who doesn’t have the backbone to speak up when there is a better solution to the problem. Thats what ur expecting of us. To tread around you like you’re on broken glass and pick every word I say carefully before speaking it.

Thats not how a relationship works is it? I’m sure you’re going out with the bloke for his ability to see things you can’t. To offer you a different objective perspective. Remember the days you gushed to your friends how this one was “different” and smart? Probably because he had a brain and decided to point out differing lines of thought (Unless you’re the type that can’t stand being told she’s wrong and just wants a patient husband to back her up)

Men are different from women…period. Hence you will not always agree, whether its because of ur upbringing, or ur socio-economic status, or religion or culture…its all unimportant. Men approach issues differently to women. That is an inherent truth. Understand that, and life is so much easier. When we disagree, its not because we don’t like you, or because its anything personal…we’re in a relationship with you for God’s sake, of course we like you!

Its just that we see different issues in different ways. Is that so wrong? Outline what you want from the very beginning and you won’t have a problem. Tell the guy what you want/need and I’m sure he’ll do it…or at least try. And if you’ve communicated everything you want to…without change, then you know something isn’t too right. There will always be conflict, not least because of our differing genetics…the most we can do is make life easy for each other and spell it all out. Break it down, and make it simple instead of assuming we can each read minds.

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